Loop routes: great connectivity or just loopy?
I was having a trawl through recent changes to the London Underground network and noticed one change that had somewhat slipped past my attention – the adjustment of the Circle Line to something that’s now more of a “spiral route”, with the addition of a section from Hammersmith to Paddington.…
6 Comments Fixing Auckland Transport: Lessons from the EU
There’s an interesting transport discussion, led by European Union member of parliament Michael Cramer on Tuesday evening. The event is being organised by Green MP Gareth Hughes, though Labour MP David Shearer and myself will also be speaking about the topic of key transport initiatives for Auckland and the way forward.…
Auckland Council’s submission on holiday highway
The latest meeting of the Auckland Council transport committee includes, for information purposes, the final version of the council’s submission on the Puhoi-Warkworth section of the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway”. I previously blogged about the draft version of the submission, but as there was plenty of discussion on the matter at the last Transport Committee meeting, it’s worthwhile following up on the final form of the submission.…
The Roadfather
A great little sign spotted at protests against the Kapiti Expressway near Wellington:…
What influences public transport patronage?
One strange thing about NZTA is that, despite being a generally roads-obsessed organisation, there are parts of the agency which come up with great initiatives and great work. Whoever write NZTA submissions on plan changes and resource consent applications in the Auckland area often comes up with great points to make (often a lot better than what ARTA had to say), while another great part of the organisation is the work done to fund interesting research into transport matters.…
The next Government Policy Statement
The Government Policy Statement (GPS) for transport is a very important high-level document outlining what the government wants to achieve from investment in the transport network over the next three years. The current GPS was released in May 2009 – and unfortunately was a document stuck in the 1960s when it came to much of its thinking about transport investment.…
Employment: to concentrate or to disperse?
I’ve spent the last couple of days at an interesting conference, based around trying to be smarter about how we intensify our urban areas. There seems to be general agreement – at least amongst planners, architects, policymakers, urban designers and so forth – that we do want to intensify our urban areas, for important sustainability reasons, but also for simple economic efficiency reasons (that I’ve discussed before).…
The Tiverton-Wolverton upgrade
Auckland Transport’s latest board meeting reports that an upgrade to Tiverton Road and Wolverton Street in New Windsor (between Mt Roskill and New Lynn) is likely to be fast-tracked as a project for completion before October next year. This corridor is shown below – with the red section indicating the part of the road upgraded a few years back and the blue section showing that yet to be upgraded, but which now forms part of the project proposed for completion over the next year and a half.…
Penlink’s business case
There has been quite a lot of discussion in the last week or so about what the priority of the “Penlink” road is. This connection would provide much quicker access between the Whangaparaoa Peninsula and the Auckland urban area, by cutting off a relatively huge detour vehicles must make at the moment.…
Christchurch
My word, what a truly horrible afternoon. Since about 1.30pm – when I found out about today’s Christchurch earthquake – it has been a truly surreal afternoon watching on TV, listening the radio, following updates on Twitter and so forth as events have unfolded.…
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